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Progressive Animal
Welfare Society
PO Box 1037
Lynnwood, WA 98046

Smarter Than the Average Bearby Kevin Mack, PAWS Wildlife Naturalist

Black bear 00-1805 was the 39th bear cub to be received by the PAWS
Wildlife Department. To date PAWS has received a total of 42 bears, but
00-1805 is the only one whose case number has remained in my memory.
There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which being
that his was the first bear release I was responsible for as PAWS
Naturalist. As memorable as the release was, however, it was the
behavior of the bear at the center on the morning of his release that
left the most lasting impression.

In early June of 2000, the PAWS Wildlife Department received a call
from Ashford, WA. The caller had been seeing three bear cubs in her
back yard for several days and was concerned that they had been
orphaned or abandoned. Another staff member and I traveled to Ashford
to assess the situation. We arrived to find that two of the cubs had
disappeared.

A horned grebe, being treated for a wing laceration, relaxes in a pool at PAWS.

The third was still in the area, skinny and clearly in need of help. As
he would prove in a more surprising fashion at a later time, this cub
was very capable of avoiding capture. I managed to get a net over him
as he scrambled up the trunk of a tree, but the 10-pound bear easily
bent the rim of the net and continued upwards and out of reach. The cub
was not quite as adept at avoiding the tranquilizer dart of the
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife agent who brought him to us
on June 12th, 2000.

A Douglas squirrel pauses briefly during his release on October 16th.

Once at PAWS, cub 00-1805 adapted well
to his new surroundings. Although he was the only bear the center
received in 2000, and thus had no cage mates, he was very skilled at
entertaining himself. During his stay, he used a piece of cage
furniture (a Dogloo) as a rocking chair, used old Christmas trees as
chew toys, and practiced his diving skills in a water trough. As
enjoyable as this was for the bear, it was even more enjoyable for the
staff and volunteers who watched him via closed circuit camera.

Although PAWS prefers to release bears into dens during their
hibernation, 00-1805 was over-wintered at the center due to a skin
condition that required treatment. The treatment of the skin condition
caused him to be awake well into the winter, so he never fully entered
his winter sleep. By the time spring rolled around, the cub was 145
pounds heavier than he had been at admit. His skin condition had
resolved and he was healthy and ready for release.

Release day came on April 23, 2001. In order to avoid the need to
tranquilize the bear to get him into a transport crate, the wildlife
center staff had devised a plan. A week prior to the release date, we
had placed the crate (made out of welded aluminum) in the bear's cage
and removed the door so it was just an open container. Each day leading
up to the release we had placed "treats" (fish, berries, etc.) in the
crate to try to convince the bear that it was a safe place. It seemed
to work. He entered the crate on a regular basis to grab the food and
even retreated to it when threatened. When the door to the cage that
contained the crate was closed the night before release to deny him
access, he made it clear that he was not pleased by banging around in
his other cages and generally making a spectacle of himself. On the
morning of the 23rd we rigged up the door of the transport crate to a
pulley and cable system hoping that we could simply drop it when the
bear entered the crate to get his food. The trap was set and the door
to the cage was opened.

Raised at the PAWS Wildlife Center, this male red fox regained his freedom on September 1st.

Cub 00-1805 clearly showed signs that he smelled the berries, smelt and
other morsels that were waiting for him at the back of the crate. He
entered the cage sniffing at the air and headed straight to the
transport crate. He noticed, however that something had changed. He
sniffed the door of the crate and chewed on it a little bit. He
wandered around to the back of the crate to see if he could get at the
food without going inside. He walked again to the front of the crate
and pawed at the door a bit more. While all of this was happening I was
standing outside of the cage door waiting to release the cable that
would spring our little trap. The bear periodically looked in my
direction as he examined the changes to his crate. Finally, realizing
that he couldn't get at the food any other way, the bear started to
enter the crate.

Just as I started to feel proud of myself for outsmarting a bear, he
laid down flat on his stomach with his hindquarters sticking out of the
crate and reached out with his front paws. I was both amused and
annoyed at the same time. He managed to stretch just far enough to hook
a strawberry with his claw and then backed out of the crate quickly
while stuffing the prize in his mouth. He retreated to the opposite end
of the cage and began to threaten me with stomps and snorts. Bear 1,
Wildlife Staff 0. He approached the transport carrier a few more times
but it was abundantly clear that he didn't intend to enter in light of
the changes we had made. Eventually, two staff members climbed onto the
roof of the cage. The bear was far more afraid of the sight of people
above him than the prospect of being trapped in the carrier. He ran
inside and I was able to drop the door. The door was padlocked, the
bear was loaded into the truck and he was off to his release site near
Mt. Rainier.

The thing that makes this little scenario so puzzling is that this bear
had never had any experience with being trapped in a carrier in this
manner. He had the run of 5 large cages while he was at the center
though, and each was divided from the other by a sliding steel door.
Although the configuration was very different, he may have still
recognized some similarity in the setup. I will never know how clear
his understanding of the situation really was, but in my mind cub
00-1805 will always be remembered as an individual that was smarter
than the average bear...